It is common to place cameras on vehicles for purposes of providing one or more images of areas surrounding the vehicle to an operator. This helps to improve the awareness of the operator relative to conditions near the vehicle for avoiding collisions and to assist in maneuvering the vehicle for parking or movement near loading docks or the like. For these reasons and for purposes of attempting to provide a “surround view” of the area around the vehicle, cameras have been located at various positions on the vehicle such as for example at the front end, rear, left side, and right side. These cameras offer the operator various views relative to the vehicle including forward, rear, left and right views. In some applications, the set of views are combined by abutting or “stitching” these into a single image for display on the dashboard of the vehicle or the like to provide live panoramic or bird's eye views of the vehicle in its current setting for the convenience of the operator.
Surround view cameras may be advantageously mounted at the corners of selected structure of the vehicles. However, the view at these corners is often blocked by mirrors or other protuberances intrinsic to the vehicle, leading to obstructed or blank spots in the resultant surround view making it difficult for the driver to see a complete image of peripheral areas relative to the vehicle. In addition, during use of the surround view camera systems, objects adjacent the vehicle might block the images obtained by the one or more cameras. These other protuberances or structures extrinsic to the vehicle also lead to obstructed or blank spots in the resultant surround view making it difficult for the driver to see a complete image of peripheral areas relative to the vehicle.
It is therefore desirable to provide a vehicle surround view system without these limitations and which provides realistic, life-like, images to a vehicle operator without introducing any blind spots or blind spot artifacts or other confusion into the image and, in particular, to provide a vehicle surround view system that can fill in surround view areas blocked by vehicle parts such as mirrors or blocked by other extrinsic objects or the like.